April 5, 2024
This coming Lord's Day we eat and drink the Lord's Supper, the Christ-authorized picture of His cruciform love for us. Recall that this meal, also called Communion, is a sacrament of the new covenant - that is, it's a sign and a seal of God's covenant mercies and promises in His Son. As we gather around the table, the Lord nourishes and cherishes us spiritually, by reminding us of His substitutionary death on our behalf, and assuring us that if our trust is in Him, we have union and communion with Him in His death and resurrection (read Romans 6!). The Lord's Supper is a means of growth and grace in our knowledge and experience of how wide and long and high and deep is the love of our Savior.
On Sunday evening, as we continue working our way through the Westminster Larger Catechism, we will be confessing two questions pertaining to the Lord's Supper, and I thought it would be good to put them here also so that you can meditate on them before coming to the table.
Question 170. How do they that worthily communicate in the Lord's supper feed upon the body and blood of Christ therein? This question is getting at how Jesus is present in the Supper, and the nature of our feeding upon Him. The early church was sometimes accused of cannibalism, because they spoke of eating the body and blood of Jesus. But the Bible doesn't teach that the elements actually are or become the literal body and blood of Jesus (aka transubstantiation, the Roman Catholic view) or that the literal body and blood of Jesus are somehow with, in, or under the elements (aka consubstantiation, the Lutheran view). Rather, Presbyterians believe in the real spiritual presence of Jesus, a presence to our faith.
Here is how our catechism answers the question: "As the body and blood of Christ are not corporally or carnally [i.e., in a bodily/fleshly manner] present in, with, or under the bread and wine in the Lord's supper, and yet are spiritually present to the faith of the receiver, no less truly and really than the elements themselves are to their outward senses; so they that worthily communicate in the sacrament of the Lord's supper, do therein feed upon the body and blood of Christ, not after a corporal and carnal, but in a spiritual manner; yet truly and really, while by faith they receive and apply unto themselves Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death."
Question 171. How are they that receive the sacrament of the Lord's supper to prepare themselves before they come unto it? This questions presupposes and explains what Paul's command in I Corinthians 11 to examine ourselves means. We aren't to show up without having taken any time to think about what we're about to do, or about our sin and our Savior. I'll break it down into its phrases:
"They that receive the sacrament of the Lord's supper are, before they come, to prepare themselves thereunto,
by examining themselves
of their being in Christ,
of their sins and wants [i.e., what we lack, need, have a deficit of];
of the truth and measure of
their knowledge, faith, repentance;
[their] love to God and the brethren,
[their] charity to all men, forgiving those that have done them wrong;
of their desires after Christ,
and of their new obedience;
and by renewing the exercise of these graces, by serious meditation, and fervent prayer."
May our Father give us grace to come to the table rightly prepared and anticipating Him to work through His spoken and visible word to grow us up in Jesus Christ by His Spirit!